Random

✽ The Indian army has developed a non-lethal chili grenade. I like the non-lethal part but the temptation will be to use it in non-life-threatening situations -- similar to the way that the tasers are being used. ~ link

✽ PrintPlace, which did a good job for me, is trying to build their customer base. They're giving away 250 free business cards to people who sign-up for their email list. ~ link

✽ One difference between the therapeutic gospel and the liberating gospel by Mark Galli~ link

✽ In megachurches 92% of the people are just hanging around. Only 8% do more than show up, according to a now-slightly-dated Hartford Institute of Religious Research study. Have we created a dysfunctional monster? Or is someone misinterpreting the data? I'd like to suggest that the number of volunteer hours inside the church-system is not necessarily a solid measure of ministry impact in the community nor of healthy discipleship. ~ link

✽ Ed Stetzer on creating a church multiplication movement in the US:

One of the first things we need to do is give more people permission to plant churches. There are marks of the biblical church and those always need to be central to what we do, but we have “clergified” church planting. In other words, we have made it necessary to be a certain class of person in order to plant a church -- and I don’t think we see that in the New Testament. We see laypeople planting churches, we see pastors going out and planting churches and we see bivocational people doing it.

It’s amazing to me how many church planters think God’s will is determined by whether or not they can get enough funding to underwrite them in a full-time ministry -- this attitude is unhelpful. We must learn to give people permission to plant biblically-driven churches without a false class system. ~ link

✽ Roosevelt Lake, to the east of Phoenix is at its highest level ever, 101% capacity. The Salt River will continue to flow! ~ link

✽ There are a lot of people who oppose the proposed health care plan not because they are Scrooges but because they believe that ultimately, over the long-run, more people will get a lot better care through a different kind of system than the one proposed. It is important that those advocating the program currently on the table do not demonize the opponents and assume that their interests are self-serving. Likewise, it is not helpful to suggest that the president has anything but the best interests of people in mind in what he has proposed.

I am neither for nor against the proposed program. Even after listening to all the hot-air rhetoric from both sides I really do not understand the system nor the funding streams. Failure to clearly articulate the flow and the details suggests to me that it is still half-baked and not ready for a decision. Anyone have a suggestion for some level-headed impartial analysis? Or does that not exist in this debate?